GET THE RECOGNITION
Professional Self-Coaching for Being Seen for the Value You Create
Tell the Three Stories That Reveal the Strategic Value Hidden Inside Your Everyday Work
Make Visible What You've Been Doing All Along — So the Right Opportunities Can Find You
You are probably doing more than your job title describes. Not more hours — more than the title can capture: work that has quietly grown beyond the role it was written for, into something that has no name yet, and because it has no name, nobody sees it — including you.
This is a recognition problem — the value is real and already there; what's missing is that it has never been named. And that has a solution.
The value you create is not always visible in the language you've been given for your work. Job titles, role descriptions, departmental functions — they describe what you do. They say nothing about how you think, what you understand, or the human insight behind the technical task. And when the frame is too small, you make yourself smaller than you are — not from any lack of ambition, but because you haven't yet found the story that shows what you're actually doing.
This resource takes you, step by step, from your experience to three prepared professional stories that make your real value visible — first to yourself, so you can finally see what you've been doing; then to the people around you, so colleagues, managers and clients recognise it too; and finally, by turning the same questions outward, so you can draw out the value in others — which is where recognition becomes partnership.
Get the Recognition distils more than twenty years of professional coaching, writing and practice into a structured method that enables you to coach yourself through one important professional challenge. It captures the thinking, the sequence, the questions and the frameworks a coach would bring to hours of one-to-one work — and places them in your hands, to work through in your own space and time. Get the Recognition is built in three parts, nine steps.
Who This Is For
Someone who feels there is more to what they do than their role admits. The person who is respected, reviewed well, relied upon — and quietly restless, sensing that their potential is being constrained by others' perception of their role. If you have ever described your work in the language of your job title and felt, as you said it, that the words were making you smaller than you are — this is for you. Everything in it is designed to be completed by you, in your own space and time. All you need is somewhere to write — paper or screen, whichever is your preferred way of working.
What You'll Learn
- Why strategic value so often hides inside work that looks purely operational
- How to recognise the success, failure and passion stories inside your own experience — and see the pattern beneath work you'd called "just doing my job"
- How to give your value a frame that fits, so others can finally see what you've been creating
- How to connect your three stories into one picture of how you think, what you've learnt and what drives your work
- How to turn the same three-story questions outward — drawing out other people's value, which is how recognition becomes partnership
- Why the conversations that change careers rarely happen in the formal structures built for them
How This Self-Coaching Resource Works
Get the Recognition is built in three parts, nine steps.
Part One — Recognise Your Own Value
- Step 1 — Recognise Your Success Story
- Step 2 — Recognise Your Failure Story
- Step 3 — Recognise Your Passion Story
Part Two — Give It a Frame That Fits
- Step 4 — Turn Recognised Value Into a Story Others Can See
- Step 5 — Connect Your Three Stories
- Step 6 — Reframe How Others See Your Work
Part Three — Create Recognition in Others
- Step 7 — Ask the Three Questions That Draw Out Value
- Step 8 — Turn Presenting Into Partnership
- Step 9 — Pass the Recognition On
Every step asks the questions that bring clarity, and every step ends in writing — that's what self-coaching means here: you find your own answers, and the work is yours. By the final page you will have three completed professional stories that didn't exist before you began — and a way of seeing your value, and other people's, that stays with you.
Throughout, you'll follow Emma, an operations manager at a logistics company who, for three years, was good at her job and certain her work was "operational rather than strategic." She solved problems, kept systems running, and supported clients through crises — and thought of none of it as anything more than doing her job well. The person who first saw it differently was Helen — the head of business development, a colleague Emma had worked with but never talked to beyond immediate operational issues, until one unplanned conversation over coffee. Helen asked a question that showed Emma her work had a different name, and a different future. At each step, you'll see how Emma came to recognise her value before you work to recognise your own.
A Note to Learners
Emma was fortunate. She had a Helen — someone who saw her value from the outside and named it before she could name it herself. A good manager, a mentor, a colleague who asks the right question at the right moment: these people are real, and if you have one, treasure them, because they can change the course of a career in a single conversation.
But you cannot plan for a Helen, and you should not have to wait for one. The whole of this resource rests on a quieter truth: the thing Helen did for Emma, you can learn to do for yourself. What Helen offered was not the answer — it was a question that made Emma look at her own work from the outside and see what was already there. That is a skill, not a gift, and it is exactly what self-coaching is: asking yourself the questions that bring clarity, finding your own answers, and acting on what you learn.
That is what Emma discovered. Helen opened the door, but Emma walked through it alone — sitting at her laptop that evening, then at pitch meetings, then mentoring others, asking the questions herself. She stopped needing a Helen. She became her own.
This resource is the frame that fits, arriving as questions you ask yourself. If a Helen appears, wonderful. If not, you will not have missed your chance — because by the end of this, you will be able to do for yourself the thing you were waiting for someone else to do. And in Part Three, you will learn to do it for others: to become, for someone else, the Helen you may never have had.
Why These Three Stories
Here is the reason value stays invisible, and it is almost never the fault of the value itself.
We describe what we do in the language we've been given — and that language is almost always too small. It captures the task and misses the thinking. It names the role and hides the judgement. Emma had the language of operations. She was doing the work of business development. Those two things never matched — and until someone gave her a frame that fitted, the mismatch simply read, to everyone including her, as "a good operations manager."
Three stories close that gap, because between them they show the things a job title cannot:
Your Success Story reveals your distinctive value — the thing you do that goes beyond the task, that you may have never recognised as anything special.
Your Failure Story reveals what you've learnt — and in this resource, it reveals something particular: the value you created for years without seeing it, and the cost of that invisibility.
Your Passion Story reveals what drives you — the human insight beneath the technical work, the reason your distinctive value is distinctively yours.
Separately, they are work anecdotes. Connected, they reveal who you are professionally — and give others a frame for your value that finally fits.
What You Finish With
- Three completed professional stories — success, failure and passion — that make your real value visible
- One connected picture — the links between the three, so they land as a professional identity rather than three anecdotes
- A frame that fits — language for your value that others can immediately see and understand
- The three questions — the ones that draw out anyone else's success, failure and passion, turning a colleague's frustration into their breakthrough and a pitch into a partnership.
- Your Recognition Page — a single page that holds your three stories and the questions, ready for the conversations where your value needs to be seen
About Professional Self-Coaching
Self-coaching is the ability to guide yourself through every part of your WorkLife journey — through stable times and times of change and uncertainty. It is asking yourself the questions that bring clarity, finding your own answers, and acting on what you learn.
Each Professional Self-Coaching resource is created for one important professional moment. One purpose. One challenge. One outcome. The thinking, frameworks and practical guidance within each resource are distilled from the School of WorkLife programmes — a body of work developed through twenty years of practice — and focused entirely on helping you prepare for the moment in front of you. Every resource strengthens the three abilities at the heart of School of WorkLife: self-coaching, self-directing and self-leadership.
Get the Job is drawn from The Art of WorkLife Storytelling: Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity — the complete programme exploring how the stories we tell shape the way we communicate who we are at work: our values, our thinking, our experiences, and what we stand for.
About School of WorkLife
School of WorkLife creates story-based learning resources that help people think more clearly about the challenges, conversations, and decisions that shape a working life.
Each story is drawn from real WorkLife situations and developed into practical learning experiences that combine narrative, reflection, and structured application.
Author's Note
The stories I write are based on real WorkLife challenges, obstacles and successes. Persons and companies portrayed in the stories are not based on real people or entities. Carmel O' Reilly. www.schoolofworklife.com